Excerpt from From the Crescent City to the Golden Gate Via the Sunset Route of the Southern Pacific Company Oh! The Sunset Route, surely. Indeed, it is, in my opinion, the only route one should take during the winter months. I prefer it over all the others at all times of the year, even. It is below the snow line, you know, and is built in a very superior manner; it has the most excellent eating-houses of any of the trans continental lines, makes good time, runs through a thousand kinds of country, presenting a greater variety of scenery than any other route, and has the reputation of taking you into Los Angeles or San Francisco on time, to a second, and always without a scratch. It is a marvellously nice thing, my boy, to crawl into your section every night, while skipping across the country at the rate of from twenty-five to thirty-five miles an hour, and feel that same degree of safety one feels upon retiring in his own house. I can see at once, from what you say, that we should make a mistake in going by any other route, at least at this time of the year. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Five Years Within the Golden Gate The northern part of the great valley above mentioned is drained by the Sacramento river and its tributaries. The southern part is watered, but less effectually, by the San Joaquin stream, which also receives a number of subordinate feeders. Both these main rivers, ap preaching each other for some distance, at length mingle their waters at a point nearlv midway in the great valley, a little distance above San Francisco, through the noble bay of which, so denominated, they finally escape to the ocean. The bay itself is about seventy miles long by fifteen broad, being, at the entrance, narrowed into a channel only about a mile broad, but fully five long, through which its waters escape in a current at the entrance, as the tide ebbs and ows to and from the ocean. But for that channel or strait, the inner waters would remain like a noble lake. This channel or strait, from the western side of the bay, passes on the northern shore between high promontories, which gradually ascend to the Coast Range Mountains, and in the same manner on the Opposite side to the bold but less elevated coast on the south. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

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Excerpt from By Motor to the Golden Gate "Qui s'excuse s'accuse." Which, I suppose, proves this a defence to start with! But having been a few times accused, there are a few explanations I want very much to make. When this cross-continent story was first suggested, it seemed the simplest sort of thing to undertake. All that was necessary was to put down experiences as they actually occurred. No imagination, or plot or characterization - could anything be easier? But when the serial was published and letters began coming in, it became unhappily evident that writing fact must be one of the most unattainably difficult accomplishments in the world. In the first place, only those who, having lived long in a particular locality and knowing it in all its varying seasons, are qualified truly to present its picture. The observations of a transient tourist are necessarily superficial, as of one whose experiences are merely a series of instantaneous impressions; at one time colored perhaps too vividly, at another fogged; according to the sun or rain at one brief moment of time. It would be very pleasant to write nothing but eulogies of people and places, but after all if a personal narrative were written like an advertisement, praising everything, there would be no point in praising anything, would there? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Golden Gate Fleeta had troops of friends, and often went to gay parties, where the girls danced gracefully, and swung their beautiful dresses daintily, and felt quite like little women; where the boys bowed like princes, and slipped pretty confec tions or flowers into the hands of the maidens they liked best and where brilliant lights and gay music kept the party awake long after their young eyes should have been closed in sleep. On the other hand, Gretchen's friends were very few. Her companions were the children of the street, whose wicked words often made her tremble, though she would sometimes wind her thin arm about some tattered little shoulder, and whisper that it was wicked to swear, and that mother said God wished everybody to be gentle and good. Both of the little girls had heard the blessed lesson which the Son of God taught, and IS ever teaching, to the sons of men. There are no rich and poor in His school, and whether Fleta was shown in her gilded Bible the words. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.